NAM dilly-dallies on coach

The Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) is digging a grave for the Queens ahead of the 2016 competitions.

Six months after the Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) recommended that the association should employ a permanent coach, NAM is yet to act on that recommendation.

It has been a trend for NAM to embark on Queens’ preparations for international events late and consequently it cost the Queens a fifth place on the World Netball rankings following a string of poor results at the 2015 World Netball Cup in Sydney, Australia. This time around, the Queens are again preparing to fail at the 2016 competitions.

Between May and December 2016, the Queens are expected to take part in the Confederation of Southern African Netball Association (Cosana) Championships, Under-21 World Championships qualifiers and the Africa Netball Association (Ana) Championships.

Prior to the 2015 World Cup, the Queens started camp training a month before the competition when other national teams were in their sixth month of preparations. That scenario will surely catch the Queens off-guard again ahead of the imminent events due to complications on the hiring of a permanent coach.

Weekend Nation has learnt that  since Sports Council ordered NAM in June this year, to follow proper recruitment procedures by advertising the Queens’ coaching job, nothing has started due  to NAM’s dilly-dallying to formulate and present  their strategic plan to MNCS.

And the Queens’ preparations might be delayed further as NAM president Rosy Chinunda admitted during the week that they are yet to finalise their strategic plan and she could not tell when it would be ready.

According to Sports Council executive secretary George Jana, it is a proper strategic plan that will detail duties of the coach before government puts her on monthly salary.

“We advised them (NAM) to present to us their strategic plan so that we can start the process of making arrangements for the deployment of the national coach but we have not received it yet,” said Jana.

“They cannot employ a coach in the absence of a strategic plan because it is such a document that will determine whether government can put her on the payroll.”

According to Jana, there is need to have a documented and outlined scope of work for the coach throughout the period of contract because they do not want to give monthly salary to someone that would only be doing event-based assignments.

Nevertheless, he said although NAM’s delay to come up with the plan of action will not have any impact on the consideration of the coach in the next budget, it will be a mess in terms of netball development because the local netball body with be operating without much focus.

“Government cannot afford to pay salary to a coach that will only be with the team at two or three events in a year. We need to know what the coach will be doing if the team is not at an international event. “ Jana said.

But NAM president Rosy Chinunda said they are in the process of finalising the documentation of the strategic plan.

“Our strategic plan is currently in a draft form and we are in the process of finalising it,” Chinunda said.

In June, NAM nullified contracts it offered to Peace Chawinga-Kaluwa and Mary Waya. Instead, they deployed the coaches on temporary basis to handle the 2015 World Netball Cup between July and August.

Meanwhile, the recently formed fund-raising group for the Queens, ‘Our Queens Our Pride’ is finalising the registration of the entity as a trust.  Hlupekile Phiri-Chalamba, coordinator of the group, confirmed the development.

“We submitted our registration documents to the Ministry of Justice and we are just waiting to be awarded a certificate so as to launch the trust,” she said. n